LAT - How Bush thinks: intuition over intellect

[Starfury]

(...)

Personally, I put less weight on the fact that Putin got a cross from his mother, and more on the fact that Putin has smothered Russian democracy by outlawing opposition parties, shut down any remotely skeptical media outlet and subjected his critics to political show trials. Yet this sort of evidence has had barely any effect on Bush. Two years later, he was still praising Putin's desire for "a country in which democracy and freedom and rule of law thrive."

Bush is even apt to apply this particular brand of illogic to his own character. In one of the 2000 presidential debates, Al Gore pointed out that Bush as governor of Texas opposed a measure to expand children's healthcare and instead used the money for a tax cut. The debate moderator then asked Bush, "Are those numbers correct? Are his charges correct?" To which Bush replied, "If he's trying to allege that I'm a hardhearted person and I don't care about children, he's absolutely wrong."

The style of Bush's reply is telling. Gore was trying to make a point about Bush's moral priorities by establishing a series of facts about Bush's behavior. Rather than deny having chosen tax cuts over children's healthcare, or explain his rationale for having done so, Bush changed the subject to more comfortable ground: judging people's hearts. He asked the audience to intuit, based on the way he carries himself, that he is a warmhearted person, and thus to reject out of hand any facts that might clash with this impression.

The point isn't just that Bush refuses to engage with facts he finds inconvenient. (Many fail that test.) It's that Bush rejects reason itself. Reason is a process by which we draw our broader conclusions from an accumulation of specific evidence. When the evidence changes ("Hey, this Putin guy seems to be squelching dissent"), our conclusions can also ("Perhaps he doesn't love democracy as much as he said he did!"). Bush, on the other hand, arrives at his beliefs through intuition. His supporters marvel at the unshakeable certainty of his convictions. Well, no wonder.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-chait5aug05,1,207286.column

[opihimoimoi]

1. Intuitive? with accruacy? Nope.... ARROGANT....?..... YES

SELF CENTERED? YES

[Demeter]

6. IT's Fantasy, Not Intuition

Intutition means coming up with the truth with insufficient facts for deductive reasoning. Bush just makes up nonsense and then clings to it, like bird lime on a car.

[BlueEyedSon]

2. dupe

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=4273518&mesg_id=4273518

[Starfury]

3. Dang, searched for it but didn't see it earlier. Sorry..... n/t

[BlueEyedSon]

4. np! 8^)

[izzie]

5. I am not sure this is right but Noblesse oblige rings a bell

Bush seems to go with the same type of people and from the same schools. It is almost like a pattern. I am sure it is half the reason that no officers are up on charges in the prison camps. 'His type' people just do not do bad things and they are in the know on ruling. So a ruler like Putin would be OK but some one like Saddam would be from the lower classes and not good. Bush also seems to think you must be good if your rich and no counting on how you got the money.

[Inland]

7. And his followers judge Bush by Bush's intent, not results, not policies

as well. Bush MEANS well, so if he invades Iraq thinking there were WMDs, and there aren't, he can stand up and say that he will do anything to protect America and is good intent is good enough, for some.

This is the crowd who sees steely resolve as a good thing, even as it is steely resolve in the pursuit of the wrong policies.

Right wing christianity plays into that, as the profession of faith means that everything he does is with good intent and pursuant to some mysterious way of God.

[katty]

8. Intuitive?!@ more like a oozing, emoting,chaotic solar plexus

[The Traveler]

9. Where I come from, such men are known

as idiots.

[agincourt]

10. Another possibility,

is that he's a habitual liar.